.

CHAPTER IV

THE GIANT IN THE SPIKED HELMET

Prussia in 1870. Militarism in the Schools, in the Universities, in
the Home, in the Sepulchre. The Hohenzollern Lineage.

CHAPTER V

A STUDENT'S EXPERIENCE IN THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR

Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse. The Emperor Frederick. Wilhelm II. Francis
Joseph of Austria. King Ludwig of Bavaria. Munich in War-time. A
Deserted Switzerland. France in Arms. Paris on the Verge of the Siege.

CHAPTER VI

AMERICAN HISTORIANS

George Bancroft. Justin Winsor. John Fiske.

CHAPTER VII

ENGLISH AND GERMAN HISTORIANS

Sir Richard Garnett. S.R. Gardiner. E.A. Freeman. Goldwin Smith.
James Bryce. The House of Commons. Lord Randolph Churchill and W.E.
Gladstone as Makers of History. Von Treitschke. Ernst Curtius. Leopold
von Ranke. Theodor Mommsen. Lepsius. Hermann Grimm.

CHAPTER VIII

POETS AND PROPHETS

Henry W. Longfellow. Oliver Wendell Holmes. James Russell Lowell.
The Town of Concord. Henry D. Thoreau. Louisa M. Alcott. Nathaniel
Hawthorne. Ralph Waldo Emerson. Phillips Brooks.

CHAPTER IX

MEN OF SCIENCE

German Scientists: Kirchoff, the Physicist. Bunsen, the Chemist.
Helmholtz. American Scientists: Simon Newcomb, Asa Gray, Louis
Agassiz, Alexander Agassiz.

CHAPTER X

AT HAPHAZARD

William Grey, Ninth Earl of Stamford. The Franciscan of Salzburg. The
Berlin Dancer. Visits to Old Battle-fields. Eupeptic Musings.

INDEX

The Last Leaf

CHAPTER I

STATESMEN OF OUR CRITICAL PERIOD

I came to consciousness in the then small town of Buffalo in western
New York, whither, in Andrew Jackson's day, our household gods and
goods were conveyed from Massachusetts for the most part by the Erie
Canal, the dizzy rate of four miles an hour not taking away my baby
breath. Speaking of men and affairs of state, as I shall do in this
opening paper, I felt my earliest political thrill in 1840. I have a
distinct vision, the small boy's point of view being not much above
the sidewalk, of the striding legs in long processions, of wide-open,
clamorous mouths above, and over all of the flutter of tassels and
banners. Then began my knowledge of log-cabins, coon-skins, and of
the name hard cider, the thump of drums, the crash of brass-bands,
cockades, and torch-lights. My powers as a singer, always modest,
I first exercised on "For Tippecanoe and Tyler too," which still
obtrudes too obstinately upon my tympanum, though much fine harmony